Louisiana shoppers cleared Wal-Mart shelves on Saturday night, piling their carts high with groceries following a technical glitch in the state's food stamp debit card system that lifted spending limits.
Police officers were called to Wal-Mart stores in Springhill and Mansfield to help maintain order, according to CBS affiliate KSLA. Shoppers ran through the aisles, shoving necessities into their shopping carts, stocking up with as many items as they could carry.
Xerox hosts some of the framework for the Electronic Benefits Transfer system that allows people on government food stamps to buy merchandise using a debit card with set payment limitations. The company told KSLA that a power outage occurred in the midst of a routine maintenance test, which caused the system to shut down for two hours.
Wal-Mart employees were told that they could still perform transactions with EBT cardholders who were able to make unlimited purchases.
"We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage so that they could get food for their families," Wal-Mart spokesperson Kayla Whaling told KSLA, adding that Wal-Mart was "fully engaged and monitoring the situation and transactions during the outage."
In videos taken by shoppers at the two Louisiana Wal-Mart stores, customers can be seen rushing through the aisles, shoving goods into their carts.
When Wal-Mart employees announced that the EBT cards were back and running a couple hours later, and that the spending limits were in place once more, some shoppers simply left their carts filled with grocers in the aisles and left the store.
Louisiana was not the only state that experienced a glitch in its food stamp program - Link Card holders in Illinois were unable to use their cards after a glitch in the payment system led to blockages at many grocery stores in the Midwestern state on Saturday.
Some thought that the glitch was related to the federal government shutdown, but the United State Department of Agriculture - the group that distributes food stamps and debit cards - maintained that the issue was not as a result of the halt in Washington.
One in six Illinois residents use the Link Card system.
KSLA News 12 Shreveport, Louisiana News Weather
